"Bruce Sterling - Superglue (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

stitching, and cobbler's nails, and the eerie-looking modern jogging-
shoe with its laminated plastic soles, fabric uppers and sleek foam
inlays. Glue also makes much of the difference between the big
family radio cabinet of the 1940s and the sleek black hand-sized
clamshell of a modern Sony Walkman.

Glue holds this very magazine together. And if you happen to
be reading this article off a computer (as you well may), then you
are even more indebted to glue; modern microelectronic assembly
would be impossible without it.

Glue dominates the modern packaging industry. Glue also has
a strong presence in automobiles, aerospace, electronics, dentistry,
medicine, and household appliances of all kinds. Glue infiltrates
grocery bags, envelopes, books, magazines, labels, paper cups, and
cardboard boxes; there are five different kinds of glue in a common
filtered cigarette. Glue lurks invisibly in the structure of our
shelters, in ceramic tiling, carpets, counter tops, gutters, wall siding,
ceiling panels and floor linoleum. It's in furniture, cooking utensils,
and cosmetics. This galaxy of applications doesn't even count the
vast modern spooling mileage of adhesive tapes: package tape,
industrial tape, surgical tape, masking tape, electrical tape, duct tape,
plumbing tape, and much, much more.

Glue is a major industrial industry and has been growing at
twice the rate of GNP for many years, as adhesives leak and stick
into areas formerly dominated by other fasteners. Glues also create
new markets all their own, such as Post-it Notes (first premiered in
April 1980, and now omnipresent in over 350 varieties).

The global glue industry is estimated to produce about twelve
billion pounds of adhesives every year. Adhesion is a $13 billion
market in which every major national economy has a stake. The
adhesives industry has its own specialty magazines, such as
Adhesives Age andSAMPE Journal; its own trade groups, like the
Adhesives Manufacturers Association, The Adhesion Society, and the
Adhesives and Sealant Council; and its own seminars, workshops and
technical conferences. Adhesives corporations like 3M, National
Starch, Eastman Kodak, Sumitomo, and Henkel are among the world's
most potent technical industries.

Given all this, it's amazing how little is definitively known
about how glue actually works -- the actual science of adhesion.

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There are quite good industrial rules-of-thumb for creating glues;
industrial technicians can now combine all kinds of arcane